THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



sun may have somewhat softened the surface of the 

 snow. This morning I left off my crampons and put on 

 a new pair of iinnesko. These latter proved some- 

 what slippery, and in falling heavily this afternoon 

 over one of the sastrugi I slightly strained some muscles 

 on the inner side of my left leg, just below the knee. 

 This gave me a considerable amount of pain for the rest 

 of the journey. Mackay lost all his stockings and socks 

 off the bamboo pole of the sledge, but was fortunate 

 enough to recover them after walking back over a mile 

 on our tracks. 



January 7. — ^We were up at 5 a.m., when the tempera- 

 ture was minus 13° Fahr. We were anxious to arrive at 

 the end of our &st five miles in good time for Mawson 

 to get a meridian altitude, and take theodohte angles 

 to the new mountain and Mount New Zealand, which 

 were now almost disappearing from view below the 

 horizon. Mawson made our latitude to-day 73° 43'. 

 This was one of the coldest days we had as yet ex- 

 perienced on the plateau, the wind blowing from west 

 by north. We all felt the pulling very much to-day, 

 possibly because it was still slightly uphill, and prob- 

 ably partly on account of mountain lassitude. The 

 distance travelled was ten miles. 



Friday, January 8. — To-day, also, was bitterly cold. 

 The wind blew very fresh for some little time before 

 noon from a direction of about west by north, raising 

 much low drift. Our hands were frost-bitten several 

 times when packing up the sledge. The cold blizzard 

 continued for the whole day. At lunch time we had 

 great difficulty in getting up the tent, which became 

 again seriously torn in the process. Our beards were 

 frozen to our Burberry helmets and Balaclavas, and 

 we had to tear away our hair by the roots in order 

 to get them olF. We continued travelling in the 



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